Gardetto's Snack Mix

The Gardetto Family Bakery started in Wisconsin in the 1930s, specializing in bread sticks.  Their claim to fame however is a snack mix that someone made from leftover bread sticks and other items in a special blend of seasonings.  The snack mix took off and became so successful that General Mills bought them in 1999.  Yup, the owners of another popular snack mix you may have heard of: Chex Mix.  Since I love snacks, I obviously have tried it.

The mix is available in several varieties, and other versions have existed over the years, but all follow an "authentic family recipe".

Original Review: June 2016

There is nothing really homemade tasting about this to me, nor did I really enjoy it.

Original Recipe.

I tried the "original recipe", which I quickly learned isn't really that original, as General Mills has changed it several times.

The spicing is a clever mix made from dried Worcestershire sauce (that is a thing?!), MSG, sugar, and corn syrup, plus salt, garlic powder, and onion powder.

Ah, now that explains it.  Sugar and MSG.  I sorta doubt the authenticity of the "dried worcestershire sauce" though.

Anyway, while there was some mild seasoning, I honestly didn't taste much sweet nor salty nor tangy.  The pieces weren't plain exactly, but, not nearly as flavorful as this mix would imply.

Original Recipe: Components.

The mix itself contains 5 different items.

The pretzels were, well, pretzels.  No real difference between the rods or the classic twists, and these items in particular didn't have much spicing.  I separated them out and dunked them in peanut butter, and enjoyed them much more that way.

Next were the little "bread" sticks, in two forms.  These tasted identical and were just hard little bread sticks.  They had minimal spicing, more than the pretzels.  I didn't care for them.

Finally, the rye chips.  These were almost good, and did have caraway inside for some actual flavor, but, they also tasted kinda burnt.  Still, my favorite of the items.

Update Review, 2019

Every holiday season, I eat way too much of my mom's chex mix.  The problem is made worse (or, better, really), by the fact that she's taken to making *custom* batches for each member of the family tailored exactly to our preferences.  My version does *not* have Goldfish crackers, but my sister's has extra.  Mine also has all sorts of totally non-traditional snackies in it - wasabi peas, corn nuts, plantain chips, fried chow mein noodles, and more.  My cousin who can't have dairy has a version made with soy butter.  The list goes on and on.  The net result?  I have TONS of Chex mix, with exactly the things I love in it, that is all for ... me.  Thus I have to eat it all right?

Once my stash runs out, I breath a sigh of relief.  Until, you know, two days later, when I crave it again.  And in those cases, I attempt to fall back on commercial versions, like the ones made by Chex, or, Gardetto's, which I've also reviewed before.  I've never been satisfied with any, yet, when the craving calls ...

Original Recipe.

I don't like plain snack pretzels.  Of course my custom Chex mix doesn't have regular pretzels, it only has Snyder's of Hanover Pretzel Nibblers (in whatever variety my mom has on hand, usually honey mustard though, since I like those), and it has sticks from Pretzel Perfection (a gluten-free company actually, but I really like their products!), because apparently once I told my mom "I'm only willing to accept plain pretzels if they are Pretzel Perfection brand".  Oooph.  But she took note.  So these pretzels, both rods and braids, are not my thing at all.

The pumpernickel chips I almost like, good crunch, decent flavor to the chips themselves, but ... not much seasoning at all.

And then the other blond sticks, one kind with ripples but otherwise seemingly identical.  They have seasoning, and, I don't like it.

Dear self: stop trying this.  It most certainly isn't mom's, but it also just isn't anything you like.

Waffling Leftovers: Onion Rings

Yup, another installment of Waffling Leftovers, my never ending quest to put random leftovers into a waffle iron, and see what happens (you can read all about my previous adventures here!)

By now, you know I've tried waffling just about every class of leftovers, sweet, savory, main dishes, side dishes, breakfast, dessert ... I've done it all.

But somehow, I've never tried anything like simple french fries, onion rings, and the like.  I have no idea why.  I think I usually go for more interesting starting points.

It turns out, a waffle iron works absolutely fine for this, at least, for onion rings ...

The Original: Leftover Onion Ring.

I started with, well, an onion ring.  The original was great, a fresh, crispy, greasy in the right ways, onion ring, from a local Korean place (yeah,  I don't know what was Korean about it ...).

Onion rings, for me, have about a 2 minute shelf life when fresh, and after that, I kinda dislike them.  Lukewarm, soft, soggy onion rings just have no place in my life.

But, I am always generally pretty happy reheating them in a toaster oven, although it takes effort, flipping them every couple minutes, making sure they don't over cook.  The window of getting them perfectly crunchy again vs way too crisp sometimes feels like 20 seconds.

So I decided to see how the waffle iron would do, potentially requiring less work (no flipping!), and less diligence, while still giving me crispy greatness.

Leftover Onion Ring: Waffling.

I started with a tester, alongside another experiment (not really a success, leftover autumn vegetable gratin, you can read about that here).

350*, and I did nothing to it, just threw it in.  Which, is exactly what I wanted.  No work.

Waffled Onion Ring!

It took only a few minutes, and when I checked on it, I saw visible char marks, and it felt crispy overall.  Well, that was easy!

I plucked it out, let it cool enough to handle, pulled out my favorite honey mustard and ranch dipping sauces, and eagerly dunked it in both.

The verdict?  Yup, that *totally* worked.  I loved the extra crisp bite where the waffle iron made contact, and the rest was crisp, but still moist.  Really, exactly what I was looking for, and I found that I liked the two crunch levels even more than a standard ring that is all uniform.

This was a big success, no question.  And so much easier than manually flipping and watching.  I've since done it a number of times, and been absolutely thrilled with the easy results.  100% recommend.

Next, I'm definitely trying french tries, I think they'd work just about the same ...